So if there are any remaining questions about the goal of the Wingnut Perpetual Outrage Machine and the kinds of things they want to accomplish with fake videos, this USA Today op-ed should answer them rather neatly.
This is stomach-turning stuff. But the problem here is not one of tone. It’s the crushing. It’s the organ harvesting of fetuses that abortion-rights activists want us to believe have no more moral value than a fingernail. It’s the lie that these are not human beings worthy of protection. There is no nice way to talk about this. As my friend and former Obama White House staffer Michael Wear tweeted, “It should bother us as a society that we have use for aborted human organs, but not the baby that provides them.”
Richards worked to discredit the video by complaining it was “heavily edited.” But the nearly three-hour unedited video — a nauseating journey through the inner workings of the abortion industry — was posted at the same time as the edited video. Richards intoned menacingly that the video was “secretly recorded.” So what? When Mitt Romney was caught by “secret video” making his 47% remarks, the means of attaining the information was not the focus of the story.
By the way, the Kirsten Powers piece is entitled “Crush Planned Parenthood”. Her new book is called “The Silencing: How The Left Is Killing Free Speech” which is odd, because she has a regular weekly column in the nation’s largest daily newspaper in which to espouse her views.
As a matter of fact, the right wing regularly gets to say whatever the hell they want to, as evidenced by Powers and a wide array of GOP presidential candidates all screaming about how they are being “silenced” to anyone within earshot.
But the women who want and need these clinic services that Planned Parenthood provides? We don’t get to hear their side of the story so much over the noise from the right, now do we?
Chris
Quote of the day.
ETA: also odd because, y’know, she has a new book. Which is out. Successfully. Left wing free speech suppression notwithstanding.
Germy Shoemangler
@Chris:
Reminds me of Ben Shapiro and his book about left-wing “bullies” who then goes on TV and calls Zoey Tur “Sir” (which reminded of something a 7th-grade bully would do)
MattF
Yeah, there’s this thing called ‘disagreement’. Strange as it may seem, disagreeing with wingnut talking points doesn’t violate free speech.
kindness
Every single comment on the USA Today piece is by an anti-abortion jihadist. Every single one. WTF? I would at least expect some challenge to the BS but there isn’t one at the 57 comments I see.
Betty Cracker
Has Powers stopped trying to pass herself off as a Democrat? IIRC, she used to cultivate the “reasonable Democrat” persona for Fox News appearances. But she’s always been Ann Coulter with a more balanced diet and less overt racism.
TheMightyTrowel
FTFY
Silly, Zandar, wombs don’t have mouths.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: A ‘David Brooks’ liberal.
Mike in NC
Kirsten Powers is part of USA Today’s regular stable of wingnuts, along with such luminaries as Jonah Goldberg, Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, and Cal Thomas.
Amir Khalid
Meanwhile, in Trumpland …
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: Trump is eating up all the eyeballs!
Damned at Random
So the options are “sell” the tissue for a nominal fee for medical research or put them in a biohazard bag and burn them.
I will be outraged when women get pregnant for the express purpose of selling fetuses to provide stem cells for penile rejuvenation.
Jeffro
I don’t get it…should no use be made of these tissues and organs? Abortion is legal, the abortions are going to happen anyway, so shouldn’t medical research (which benefits everyone in society, whether Powers likes it or not) be able to use the tissues and organs?
Would she prefer that everything be incinerated (i.e., wasted)? No, of course not – she’d prefer there be no right to choose.
Ayn Randy
See, even Democrats like Kirsten Powers agree!
Jeffro
And as for this nonsense:
then let’s start by agreeing to (rhetorically) mow down anyone who makes access to birth control difficult/impossible, so that there are fewer unplanned & unwanted pregnancies.
Samuel Knight
One of the simplest right wing strategies is just to make stuff up and assert it loudly and dare anyone to contradict them.
The obvious point is all organ donation and research stuff is “gross” and all the medical profession does is make someone pay the costs of moving this gross stuff around. Medical professionals have to put some psychological distance when talking about it.
Chris
@Jeffro:
As near as I can tell from the Facebook Wingnut Barometer, wingnuts feel that this vindicates them because if the organs of fetuses can be used in ways that benefit medical research, it means fetuses ARE human beings and not just “a clump of cells.”
Basically, it’s yet another one of their “ah HA! An inconsistency! HYPOCRITE!” moment, the phase of “I’m just so clever” argumentation that most people have outgrown by the end of their teen years, but wingnuts never do.
Bubblegum Tate
Slacktivist links to the best response to “OMG, it’s so icky!” dipshits like Powers:
All the forced-birthers need to have their noses rubbed in this. They need to be forced to say why they think a woman with a perfectly healthy pregnancy would suddenly, at 8.5 months, decide, “Nah, I don’t want to go through with this.” They need to be forced to answer why they think life-saving medical research should be halted. And of course, they need to be forced to answer why they value a fetus so very, very, very much more than they value actual people.
Mike in NC
@Germy Shoemangler: Trump is supposed to visit the border tomorrow. He’ll probably show up wearing a fake mustache and a big sombrero, and demand that the government erect watchtowers with machine guns.
dedc79
@Chris: Umm…what will they say when we start using pigs as organ donors? That we should ban bacon because pigs now need to be treated as human beings?
Chris
@dedc79:
I’m sure they’ll think of something.
Another Holocene Human
@Bubblegum Tate: They should be forced to answer in a court of law how they did their professional duty by telling a woman who was hemorrhaging to go home and sit out the miscarriage.
How is that not murder through neglect?
gene108
Can I say nigger in public and not face a backlash? No!
Can I say “she was asking for it”, when rape allegations are made public and not get push back? No!
Can I “compliment” the new college grad we hired about how nice her ass is without worrying about a sexual harassment complaint? No!
QED: Free speech is dead.
Another Holocene Human
Anti-abortion arguments rest on a fundament of lies and “lalala I’m not listening!”
And they have the gall to call the medical profession liars.
Belafon
@Jeffro: Yeah, don’t get distracted. This is not about reusing tissue. If PP stopped providing it, people like Powers would move to something else.
ThresherK
Repeated from downstairs:
Today’s NYT front-page article about the “anti-abortion activist” was vomit-in-my-mouth worthy. I only grazed on the few front-page paragraphs and couldn’t find “disgraced” “edited” “fabulist” or “fake”. I guess the Times didn’t want to alienate their interviewee.
A craptacular piece of journalism.
AliceBlue
Are there any procedures for PP officials to follow before they talk with outsider groups? It seems to me that they should be asking for credentials and references before agreeing to speak with anyone.
Jeffro
@Belafon: Noted.
japa21
@Bubblegum Tate: That was a fantastic piece of writing and far more belonged out there in the media than this piece of tripe by Powers.
debbie
@Belafon:
Exactly! It’s “Gotcha!” Has anyone heard if the group will release the full tape? I smell a James O’Keefe wannabe who will eventually be tripped up. PP just has to remain as calm and determined as Shirley Sherrod was.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
…this is exactly what I was going to say, but better put.
@Betty Cracker:
I believe she is typical of national journalists. Take David Brooks, supreme source of all Village Wisdom. He thinks he’s a liberal, and so is everyone around him. It’s just that they’re ‘mature’ enough to see that conservative policies are the way to achieve all liberal goals. In particular, you help poor blacks by cutting back the safety net to force them to get jobs, legislate abortion out of existence to force them to be better parents, and throw them in jail at four times the rate of whites to stop them from being criminals. It’s the Reagan Democrat model.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Maybe the focus wouldn’t be on how the video was obtained and whether it was edited to be misleading if the folks making these videos hadn’t been caught so many times editing videos to the point where they are using them to lie about what actually occurred. If you don’t want that to be the focus, stop lying with video.
dedc79
How about an RIP E.L. Doctorow thread at some point?
Helen
OT sorta. Rachel Maddow is interviewing Rick Santorum live tonight. I hope she asks him about his wife’s abortion. And why it was “different.”
El Caganer
@AliceBlue: They may already have some procedures in place, since the wingnuts presented themselves as staff from some sort of phony medical institute to get in the door.
Iowa Old Lady
This just infuriates me. I’m old enough to think of Planned Parenthood as a sort of stodgy place where my college friends went to get birth control.
The lying about and general contempt for women’s choices is so offensive. How can anyone vote for these people?
Anonymous
My wife (then girlfriend) received two annual check-ups from Planned Parenthood. This was a few years ago, when I was a starving grad student and she was unemployed, so she had no insurance–not that we necessarily could have even afforded office co-pays and lab fees if she’d had insurance.
The first thing they did was sign her up for a reduced-cost, low-benefit insurance plan offered by the state that covered her checkups. We wouldn’t have known it was available without them. The second thing they did was familiarize her with their sliding scale of charges for low-income clients. Her office visits would be completely free until something about her financial status changed.
Her first checkup with PP detected an irregularity in her pap smear that, after biopsy, turned out to be a squamous cell lesion. They said it was minor, and it was possible that it would resolve on its own. A year later it was still there (though still pre-cancerous), so they made the decision to excise it. When I tell this story, particularly to conservatives, I lean on this point: Planned Parenthood kept my wife from getting cancer.
I’ve been told, by some of those same conservatives, that this story doesn’t count because it’s not about abortion. But of course PP isn’t about abortion, either: their mission is to provide women the dedicated healthcare they need, period. That means, among other things, not judging women on the basis of what kind of healthcare they need, and providing it regardless of which and how many third parties think it’s gross or immoral. And that principled, public stance is why my wife doesn’t have cervical cancer.
The pro-life position, by contrast, is that Planned Parenthood should be shut down regardless of any good they do, because they also provide abortion services. The pro-life position releases videos like this one to smear and damage Planned Parenthood for providing a particular subset of safe and legal medical services in addition to all the other medical services they provide. If pro-life activists had their way, my wife would have gotten cancer.
And accordingly the “pro-life” position is, in practice, explicitly anti-woman and anti-life.
…apparently I needed to vent about this. Sorry for the long read.
SiubhanDuinne
@dedc79:
I guess this research field is coming along just in time:
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/bacon-flavored-seaweed-could-be-new-eco-friendly-superfood.html
LWA
I think its noteworthy that she doesn’t want to crush late term abortions, not crush abortions, but crush Planned Parenthood, whose main business is providing contraception.
Because that’s the end goal, to make contraception itself a privilege reserved for the elite who can pay, while the rest of women are brought back under the care and control of their menfolk.
ETA: I think is now fair to ask Kirsten Powers- Where do you get your birth control, and why shouldn’t it be cut off?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Bubblegum Tate:
IIRC, he has (understandably) never discussed the details, but Fred Clark’s wife had an emergency late-term loss of her pregnancy with a wanted child that nearly killed her as well. So to say this is personal for him is understating it a bit.
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
A vegan, halal bacon substitute! Be still, my beating heart …
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Also, to go riding off on one of my hobbyhorses …
Forced birthers and other fundie Xtians do not want to admit that life is complicated, and shit happens. People get cancer. Wanted pregnancies go wrong and have to be terminated. Girls are sexually abused and get pregnant. Birth control fails. Abused women discover they’re pregnant right when they’re about to escape. Shit happens.
But none of them want to admit that sometimes things happen that are outside of our control, so some individual person must always be to blame if life goes wrong.
AliceBlue
@El Caganer:
That’s what I was getting at. With a little diligence and research, PP should have been able to ascertain that these people were from a “phony medical institute.”
cmorenc
@AliceBlue:
After seeing Acorn destroyed by a highly misleadingly edited and presented “undercover” video, it was bone-headed stupid for anyone connected with Planned Parenthood to not be permanently on-guard against becoming the inevitable target of an undercover ambush video. Even a minute’s worth of misleadingly edited-out-of-context apparent admissions from target organization members spreads on fast legs wearing track shoes, while accurate refutations struggle to catch up on slow legs wearing clumsy street shoes.
The words “crush” and “fetal tissue” should never have been uttered in the same chapter, let alone the same paragraph or sentence, but ANYONE connected with PP in any sort of interview by anyone, even a supposedly properly vetted and trusted party – for the same reason one should never trust nude photos of oneself in the possession of a supposedly trustworthy friend might get stolen or given to the wrong people by negligence or betrayal.
Ruviana
@Bubblegum Tate: Thank you. I was going to link to this if someone else hadn’t. I thought it was a moving and wondeful response to the “that’s so icky” argument this attack is making. Yup, research, the body, surgery, illness, birth, death, are all icky and you can’t really stop that.
Another Holocene Human
Yep, blame the victim, it’s not as if these folks didn’t spend 3 years building their cover stories and (allegedly) lying to the IRS.
Criminal behavior is criminal. That’s why we have police and judges and prisons. So we don’t all have to be paranoid on a hairtrigger motherfuckers.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: I guess this sort of answers my question form the last thread.
Hoodie
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Which I guess would seem an odd sentiment coming from people who supposedly have great faith. However, the faith you typically see in these folks is of a childlike quality, viewing everything as the product of some human-like intentionality, with their consciousness representing the center of existence. I often think conservatives and other fundies are just folks who never grew up.
NorthLeft12
Newsflash! No person has control of their cells. If you have surgery done, the removed organs/cells are deemed to be waste and the hospital/doctor can do as they please with it.
I just finished reading the story of Henrietta Lacks and her “immortal” cells. Billions of dollars, numerous Nobel prizes and reputations, and whole industries have sprung up because of research that has been completed using her unique cells.
Family [very poor] has received no compensation, and only recently has Mrs. Lacks been acknowledged for her contribution to medicine and science.
I highly recommend the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”.
Richard Bottoms
It’s sleazy. It’s deceptive and it’s wrong.
However, after forty plus years of abortion insanity from the right you’d think Planned Parenthood would have the sense to assume EVERY encounter with new “patients” or outside entities is a setup. I’m a liberal in eery sense of the word, but some liberal and progressive organizations can be monumentally stupid sometimes.
It should not be the job of anyone to offer opinions, speculation or banter. Your organization is being hunted and if you ever forget that…well this is the result.
Provide your services in a business-like manner and nothing more.
ThresherK
@Ruviana: Don’t say “Abortion is icky” three times unless the goal is to summon Will Saletan!
Richard Bottoms
@ThresherK: But abortion is messy, pretending like it isn’t is probably necessary. Planned Parenthood seems to have not gotten the message that they can never let their guard down. Ever.
sylvainsylvain
Oh, you mean medical waste is created at a facility that performs abortions? That’s right, that reminds me of Stericycle, that company that Bain Capital invested in.
But really, when we act like the image of something is more important than reality, we get distracted. Sure, it’s better for everyone to get the Treason Flag off of public buildings. It would be even better if no one ever had to worry about becoming the next Sandra Bland
And it would be better if we don’t have to spend any time or resources defending Planned Parenthood from the psychos that are dedicating their lives to destroying it.
But we do.
No answers here, just want to remind everyone.
zzyzx
I’m actually good friends with the woman in the video. She’s a very sweet person who loves Russell Wilson, so we talk a lot during Seahawks game. This whole thing has been making me sick, seeing “pro-life” people publicize her name, her address, anything they can find in an attempt to show that they care about people.
Richard Bottoms
@zzyzx: I’m sorry she’s now subject to the anti-abortion lunatics who will now stalk and harass her. But perhaps some good will come of this and progressives will realize they are up against a determined foe willing to use any tactics to win. This conversation never should have happened.
Every group from the Sierra Club to Greenpeace needs to assume they are on camera when dealing with any unknown party.
Time to grow up because the other side isn’t playing.
zzyzx
@Richard Bottoms:
That’s easy to say perhaps but impossible to live without destroying your life in different ways. If you can’t make friends or trust anyone, it’s not going to be easy to keep the motivation to help others.
Richard Bottoms
@zzyzx: It’s called not bringing a knife to a gunfight. And it’s not paranoia if someone is really out to get you.
Anti-abortion zealots are prepared spend millions to destroy Planned Parenthood, so they damn well better wake up and teach their employees to act accordingly.
If someone wants to discuss philosophy or anything that isn’t about basic services, refer them to Public Relations. Period.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I did not know that. How heartbreaking.
AliceBlue
@zzyzx:
Jeebus, no one’s saying that she (or any other progressive) is not allowed to have friends!!!
wuzzat
When God aborts a fetus (about 20% of known pregnancies), it usually gets flushed down the toilet. Why oh why can’t PP treat murdered snowflake babies with the same compassion and respect of a “burial at sea” instead of allowing them to be disrespected by becoming part of life-saving medical research?
IanY77
Typical. USA Today hires doctrinaire conservatives who toe the line, and they hire liberals to….bash liberals and liberalism. Fair and balanced, dontcha know.
Richard Bottoms
@IanY77: Don’t blame USA Today, it wasn’t their screwup. We aren’t like Teahadists and we ought to be able to face facts, even when we don’t like them.
Progressive groups are being infiltrated and spied on. Treat our encounters with the public accordingly. It doesn’t require lying or dissembling, but it does require strict adherence to message discipline. Refer all inquires on sensitive topics to those authorized to speak for the organization.
Keep your opinions and musing to yourself, a harsh reality if you are a high profile group with people screaming for your heads.
Frankensteinbeck
@Richard Bottoms:
What you are asking is utterly impossible. The only people who go around on guard like that 24/7 do it because it’s the only way to survive, and they end up fucked up in the head because of it. People relax. Hell, it’s an important topic that needed discussing. Abortion providers cannot and should not act like they’re on camera all the time. It’s unrealistic, cruel to ask, and shifts blame to the victim.
And that goes for @cmorenc in this thread and the last.
Kyle
@Richard Bottoms:
I wouldn’t blame PP for this one. The people they were talking to had spent 3 years creating a phony company with a very plausible backstory. They obviously didn’t do this for shits and giggles; they did this because PP is very scrupulous about who they talk with.
Steve in the ATL
Is it true that Margaret Sanger, PP’s founder, was a satanist?
I ask because my sister alleges this, based on information she received from the AFA.
I was under the impression that Sanger was Irish-Catholic, but who am I to question the veracity of Donald Wildmon?
Richard Bottoms
@Kyle: Here’s two words that would do the trick: No comment.
Richard Bottoms
@Frankensteinbeck: Impossible to prohibit employees and volunteers from offering their opinions on policy? Hardly. The answer is No Comment, here’s the number to our public relations office.
You answer questions about your services, you provide medical facts and information about abortion procedures. What you don’t do is talk about reimbursement rates for fetal tissue with TOTAL FUCKING STRANGERS.
Chris
@Anonymous:
… and with nothing to replace it. I mean, seriously, show me the pro-life Planned Parenthood that provides women with all the solutions they need other than abortion because abortion is murder… it’s not like right wingers don’t have enough big donors with piles of idle money lying around to make one.
(Of course, it’ll never happen, because they’re not even about saving the babies in the first place, even if you accept their premise).
Steve in the ATL
@Chris: Please don’t call them “pro-life”! They are not that–they are simply anti-abortion.
Richard Bottoms
@Steve in the ATL: Message discipline, who’d a thunk it possible?
gbear
@Richard Bottoms:
So then you have a secretly taped video of the bogus company asking leading questions followed by a reply of ‘no comment’. Wonderful. The forced-birth crowd would find that as incriminating as the existing video. They get to make up their own answers about the horrible things PP is doing rather than having a factual answer that the forced-birth crowd won’t comprehend.
Bubblegum Tate
@Steve in the ATL:
They’re not even that, really, because they resist anything and everything that would lead to less abortions. They are pro-forced birth.
Kyle
@gbear:
On top of which, the conversation that was caught on film needs to happen, sometime, if PP is to provide medical tissue for research. Imagine you’re a company that needs medical tissue for research. You hear that PP can provide it. You go to talk to them, and ask them what tissue/organs/etc. are available. They answer, “No comment”. You ask whether the fetus that provided the tissue was at 6 months of development, as that is what is needed for your research. They answer, “No comment.” How do you expect the research to go forward?
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
Yeah. I never get tired of pointing this out, but when Pat Robertson was asked about the Chinese government one-child policy, supported by abortion – he simply shrugged and said something about how they were just doing what they had to given their population.
I was just using their general term for themselves but you’re both right, it really isn’t about the baby’s life.
Kyle
@Richard Bottoms:
They weren’t total strangers. They were a company with years worth of filed tax returns, that had been set up as a front for the express purpose of fooling PP’s due diligence investigation into their legitimacy. PP got fooled, and it’s possible that they screwed up, but from what is publicly known, the front company that they were talking to appeared to be a completely legitimate research company. I 100% guarantee you that you would not be able to get a sit-down interview (like the one shown in the video) if you were some random stranger coming in off the street, asking for fetal tissue.
Richard Bottoms
@Kyle: Then the conversation happens at PP HQ with the person authorized to discuss it. Usual pedantic liberal hard head.
Richard Bottoms
@Kyle: They were a company that the most cursory inspection has now shown to be fraudulent discussing policy with a person not authorized to comment on it?
Liberals need to stop being stuck on stupid.
Your enemies sure aren’t.
The Other Chuck
@Steve in the ATL:
No, but she was an outright racist and eugenicist. She’s also been dead for almost 50 years. Let’s start talking about the right wing of 50 years ago …
Kyle
@Richard Bottoms:
I don’t buy your assertion that “the most cursory inspection has now shown to be fraudulent”. The people setting up the sting specifically mention that they spent years building up a front company.
Also, I don’t see how having it at PP HQ with a person authorized to discuss it is going to change much of anything. I guess it changes the optics (“discussing abortion over brunch” vs. “discussing abortion in a meeting room somewhere”), but in the end, there will still be video of a PP spokesperson saying that they can provide tissue, from aborted fetuses, to a for-profit company, in exchange for money to cover shipping and storage costs.
Steve in the ATL
@The Other Chuck: I wasn’t asking a serious question. My sister sent an email around about it today based on her AFA urgent action updates. PP is good for women regardless of what Sanger was or wasn’t.
The right wing of 50 years ago? Not much worse than the right wing today
Richard Bottoms
@Kyle: Well a liberal not seeing what he wants to see does happen from time to time, so I’m not shocked.
But back on planet Earth, those of us who understand tactics know that only having authorized people speaking on sensitive topics means what you’ve said is exactly what you intended.
if Planned Parenthood has a policy of accepting reimbursement for costs of transporting and handling fetal material then that is their policy.
Bitter Scribe
A few things that Kirsten Powers is leaving out:
1) To harvest recognizable organs, an abortion would have to be extremely late term.
2) Late-term abortions make up a tiny fraction of all abortions.
3) When they occur, they are almost invariably due to a medical condition in either the fetus or the mother that would lead to horrific suffering and, quite often, death.
4) The people whose stomachs are turned by the sale of fetal organs are also the same people who want to force women to carry such pregnancies to term.
My question for Powers is:
When a woman dies in childbirth because she has been denied an abortion, would you allow the hospital to donate her organs, or would that also upset your oh-so-sensitive stomach?
zzyzx
@Kyle: yeah. I’m going to focus on the people making an elaborate 3 year scam than those who fell for it. Asking perfection from people is a bit much.
Richard Bottoms
@Bitter Scribe: Except no one is selling anything.
Bubblegum Tate
@Bubblegum Tate:
That should be “…would lead to fewer abortions.” Can’t believe I biffed that one.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Richard Bottoms:
Huh? The assholes outed themselves as a fake organization specifically designed to fraudulently get this interview. How did “cursory investigation” expose them? They exposed themselves.
Richard Bottoms
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Well that makes it even worse.
The day after the acronym ACORN became known Planned Parenthood should have begun preparing exactly this kind of attack.
If it hadn’t been them it would have been some other liberal group, and undoubtedly before the 2016 campaign is done it will be so they’re not being singled out for being dumb.
But they we’re being dumb. The truth hurts. Conservative crybabies can’t face truth, but when can. If a screaming mob chasing your head for 40 years and murderers shooting people who help you dead doesn’t make you take care what the fuck will?
I haven’t said stop providing the services, or that PP has done a single thing wrong in their core mission.
But operational security is something I would have thought they would have learned a couple of decades ago.